For those coming in for the first time, this is a continuation of my diary from a couple of days ago. I am reviewing a horrible 9/11 propaganda film in extremely small chunks so I can thoroughly trash every second of it. We are now at 5 minutes 30 seconds.
This is some empty, meaningless text to fill the intro box with so it will let me post the body of the review below. The rest of the paragraph can be ignored starting now. Okay, good, now that they're gone, today's winning lotto numbers are: 3 17 9 37 and 4.
Moving on...
Bush takes a call from 'Rummy' as he says on the phone. You know, I realize you two are chums and all, but is this really the time for pet names? Rumsfeld obviously doesn't think so since he responds with a formal, 'Mr. President.' Only the Decider can call people nicknames I guess.
Bush then says-
Heightened alert status delta. That's military, C.I.A., foreign, domestic- everything.
Now, I'm not saying that Bush is incapable of saying something so nuanced, but really- does the Secretary of Defense need the President to explain what Alert Status Delta means to him? Shouldn't he be in the loop on that sort of thing already?
Bush also tells him to go to Def Con 3 if he hasn't yet. Now, depending on what movie you see, nuclear war is either Def Con 1 or Def Con 4. I'm guessing Def Con 3 means Def Con 4 is nukes in this case, but maybe not. Maybe Bush just wants to make sure we're on 'heightened alert status delta.' Man, that's long. I'm glad we switched to colors. Much easier to say.
Anyway, apropos of nothing after being told to change the Def Con level, Rumsfeld says, "But there are still 6,000 civilian aircraft in the air!" Did that need a 'but?' Is one of the requirements of Def Con 3 'shoot down every plane in the sky?' But Bush tells him that Mr. Sulu- I mean Norm Mineta will ground them. Bush then tells Rumsfeld to 'get your boys up there' which took me a minute to understand but apparently that's tough-guy cowboy talk for 'send interceptor aircraft' but to intercept what? From the way everything's played out so far, they have absolutely no idea what's going on, so where is he supposed to send them?
To prove that he is, indeed, tough, Bush then removes a pen cap with his teeth and loudly spits it out. We don't see him write the note asking Condi if he can pee though, because we cut away to Rummy alone in his office, which is apparently inside an Ikea from the 'furniture demo' look of the place and the apparent bathroom tile in the 'hallway' to the right.
Our kitchen and bathroom furnishings are just past the SNURRI Office Collection which you will find around the corner from the SMÖRGENBJAR. Please don't mind the Secretery of Defense. He'll be out now that he's finished his phone call. That was a local call, wasn't it?
Not to me a slouch, Bush then writes approximately two letters and/or doodles on a pad with a magic marker and then calls Cheney who he calls "Vice." Rummy and Vice- They're cops... and this time, it's personal.
Vice asks Mr. President for his 'current' and the response is, "we are at war." Now, remember, the towers haven't fallen yet, the Pentagon has not been hit yet and Bush has just now been notified that the planes have hit. That's some decidering, folks! He doesn't wait around for problems like who exactly we might be at war with. Damn it, it's war!
Bush then asks him if the 'anti-terrorism task force' is up and running. Much to my surprise, rather than saying, "what the hell is the anti-terrorism task force?" Miami Vice says it is and they're 'checking all flights and progress.' My, this all sounds very important, yet at the same time totally meaningless, kind of like Star Trek technobabble.
Prez again mentions Mr. Sulu grounding planes, but since he hasn't talked to Sulu yet, I think he's making an awful lot of promises he might not be able to keep. What if the transporters are malfunctioning and they forget the shuttlecraft exists and... I'm drifting. Sorry. Bush tells Cheney to 'keep rummy up to speed on that' because apparently the sole job of the Secretary of Defense is to eat large piles of eggs and sausage and tell Senators that they need to stop funding useless programs like Social Security and Education. Bush continues:
I want you to brief congressional leadership, Ah'm'on make a statemint 'n I will call you from Air Force One.
Apparently Mr. Bottoms went to the Dick van Dyke school of accents to prepare for this role. Dick, showing what a caring and concerned guy he is asks Bush if Karen is with him. We haven't seen Karen Hughes yet and I'm certain that whoever they pick to play her couldn't possibly compare to the horror of looking at the real thing, so I'm pleasantly relieved.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we don't get to see Karen. "Naw, she stayed home, last night was her weddin' anniversary," says -Hoss- Prez and just hangs up on Cheney without saying goodbye. That's not very nice!
Next comes the absolute worst casting choice of all. It must be seen to be believed:
No it isn't.
Karl's job as senior advisor is apparently to be the guy to tell Bush where to go to make his speech. Card then asks him if he's up to speed and pats him on the back in the condescending way we would expect him to if this were the real Card and Bush, the two who actually know how stupid he is.
I have no idea what Bush's response was though because he just mumbles it in his faux-southern dialect and it's too hard to catch, but the last part was, "we're in scramble mode."
Cut to the press room where a very stoned looking cameraman, probably the Director's brother-in-law with a watch that looks much more expensive than a Florida news cameraman could afford staggers past with a camera.
The other half of the banner says 'unless the thing you're supposed to read is a Presidential Daily Brief.'
Bush swaggers up to the podium as the cameras flash around him! Stop it, you fools! Don't you remember last time when it disoriented him in the chair?! But this time, the wall of multicultural children standing behind him give him the moral support needed to continue.
Timothy and the director both really ham it up showing different people watching and reacting to Bush's speech (including an 'artsy' pan down from the podium to a video monitor showing the speech from the camera's perspective. Oo. Deep.) including- oh no- Karen Hughes who is on the phone and looking at the TV in a way that looks like she only now just learned about something everybody else in the government has been keenly aware of for quite some time.
If only the real Karen looked like that...
Whatever is going on in her mind, we have no idea, because she bats her pretty eyes for the camera a couple of times and it's back to the speech. The speech is pretty much taken directly from Bush's actual speech, so I won't go into the text here- oh, okay, just one thing.
When Bush says, "attacks against our nation will not stand," we cut to a shot of a little white girl for added cheesiness effect.
We're showing a white kid! Cram more minorities into the background!
Bush's 'moment of silence' lasts about three milliseconds after which he finishes his speech and we're back to MILF Karen Hughes- better than the real thing! Karen is getting the brush-off from some staffer and insists on speaking to 'him.' Are staffers in the habit of brushing off people like Karen Hughes?
Back to Ikea where Rummy walks towards his desk and in an hilarious moment appropriately out of Star Trek, the camera tilts back and forth about 45 degrees each day, and rummy pantomimes falling over as a not very convincing rumble is heard. Either someone dropped a pallette of flat pack bookcases in the warehouse or the Pentagon has just been attacked!
We cut to outside where a general in a limousine which is next to some very prominent product placement for North American Freight lines looks out at the obvious special effect of smoke rising from the pentagon.
We don't actually get to see the Pentagon get hit which I'm sure will fuel countless 'was it going to be special effects of a plane or special effects of a missile?' debates and it will only lead to mass-bannings. You have been warned. The man is Not General Richard Meyers.
Hey! Those guys started the barbecue without me!
We're then treated to a montage blending stock footage from very different quality video stock and people running around piles of flaming rubble that don't look anything like the Pentagon; some of them with cameras and press passes because you see the media just doesn't CARE like Richard Myers.
We see Rumsfeld help carry a stretcher and holding a plasma bag, meaning that nobody thought, "hey! The Pentagon just attacked, we better make sure the Secretary of Defense is safe!" and instead thought his helping with triage was a good use of his talents at that moment. The music features a synth choir singing a dirge just so we understand how sad it is.
One thing I find mildly amusing is that they show the walls of that part of the pentagon falling and they cut back to a stock footage longshot and the walls are up again. Quality filmmaking, folks!
Air Force One takes off. Bush sits at an empty deskt and stops a pencil from rolling off of it because goodness knows the last thing he needs right now is paperwork to deal with when he has decidering to do! He sits back in his chair, apparently thrown back by the intense G-Forces of Air Force One attempting to leave the atmosphere, and looks ill. What does this mean? What am I watching? Why am I doing this? Help!
Oh yay. More MILF Karen! A nameless voice on the phone tells her that they can't establish contact with Air Force One. I guess nobody told her that they don't allow cell phones on planes, but she doesn't have much time to worry about it because Generic News Network shows the towers collapsing on her TV. She sighs and says, "Madness. The world's gone mad." which is when I hope Chuck Heston will burst in screaming, "It's a madhouse! A MAAAAAAAADHOUSE!" but unfortunately, instead, we're treated to what I'm sure the producers thought was a very high-tech display of text...
For great justice!
This turns out to be a message on a computer screen which is then inexplicably also printed out and pcked up by what looks like a navy officer at what we are told is the Intel Operations Center.
He runs with the e-mail into a conference room and hands it to someone. You'd think they might have thought to include the 'highest urgent' alarm in the conference room when they built the place, but you know government contractors...
The totally uninformative e-mail either surprised the man who was handed the paper or he had a sudden leg cramp, because he shoots up into the air. We don't know what he's shot up for because we're then treated to what probably took most of the film's effects budget, a top-down aerial view of Air Force One and fighter jets showing up to escort it. They're obviouslly CG, but they actually look pretty decent unlike almost everything else in this movie so I won't bash them.
Bush looks at them from out of the window, still not getting anything done. No wonder nothing happened when New Orleans got flooded what with him being too busy stopping rolling pencils and watching planes.
Helpfully, to the people looking out the window with him, he says, "They got our backs." They need these things explained to them.
While at Ikea, check out our model aircraft furniture display.
Assured that their backs have indeed been got, the staff sit down and Bush tells them:
We're at war. That much we know.
Glad to see he's on top of things!
To show just how tough he is, he then says (sounding EXACTLY like Forrest Gump):
Whoever did this isn't going to like me as president. They're going to pay for this.
I can't say I agree with either sentence.
And we're now at the 10 minute mark which is all I can take for today. More soon!